


If your demons were wildfires, I’d burn my hands to conquer them

by bellamees



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Comfort/Angst, Drabble, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Smut, One-Sided Relationship, Post-Canon, Protective Bellamy, Protective Clarke, Slow Burn Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3597882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellamees/pseuds/bellamees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy watches Clarke from the other side of the fire, her empty eyes, the dirt on the sides of her cheeks. She hasn’t changed from her war gear, wearing it like a reminder, the heavy, oily-looking leather and metal becoming a burden — she’s Atlas, and the world is crushing her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If your demons were wildfires, I’d burn my hands to conquer them

**Author's Note:**

> This is like an alternative ending for 2x16. The title is from a poem called _‘What would I give to save you from this’_ by **inkskinned** @ tumblr. Lots of Hamlet going on in here. Oh, and I have a lot of love for brooding Bellamy Blake and his knight-ness.

Bellamy watches Clarke from the other side of the fire, her empty eyes, the dirt on the sides of her cheeks. She hasn’t changed from her war gear, wearing it like a reminder, the heavy, oily-looking leather and metal becoming a burden — she’s Atlas, and the world is crushing her. His forgiveness had been words casually thrown in the wind, and while she followed him home, parts of her were still missing, her crown broken, dismantled, her soul in shreds. Bellamy’s chest aches, a sharp kind of pain that stings the flesh between his ribs, poking into his lungs, making his heart forget how to beat. He’s scared she’ll walk into the rifts in her mind, losing herself in them, letting herself fall. “Clarke, you need some rest,” Bellamy says over the sounds of their camp. He walks over just to sit beside Clarke, his hand finding hers, hopeful that his warmth will bring her back. “Come, I’ll help you out.”

She blinks away the darkness on the corner of her eyes, eyelashes golden, light eyes void. Clarke allows Bellamy to take her to her tent, and while she sits on her pretend bed, he’s fumbling with her laces, removing her boots. Undressing Clarke is a slow process, her armor is heavy, the metallic ware clinking, her breath comes out even, his is ragged and odd. Bellamy cleans her hands, soaking a cloth in water, removing dirt and dried blood, until the water is a stale shade of reddish brown. He’s careful with her arms as they seem fragile (they’re not, he knows), and he frees her from layers of leather, until she’s down to a t-shirt. Only when Bellamy moves his eyes up to clean her neck is that he realizes she’s looking at him, searching, questioning. His hand hovers over her neck and shoulder, untouching. The ache on his chest spreads out, like a blood stain.

“I’m sorry, Clarke. I shouldn’t have—” Some lines aren’t supposed to be crossed, Bellamy knows. Clarke doesn’t say anything. Instead, she takes off her t-shirt, and Bellamy forgets how to breath altogether. When she stands up to remove her pants, he’s still kneeling in front of her, his whole body numb, suddenly lightheaded, like oxygen can’t reach him fast enough. Bellamy wants — needs — to get up and leave, but he’s grounded, his feet incapable of moving, and when she sits in front of him again and offers her arms for him to clean, he’s sure his lungs are failing. But even though his head is pouding as much as his heart, he moves the cloth up her arms, to the constellations of freckles on her shoulder, to her neck and her face, carefully, slowly, tenderly, even. It’s Clarke who closes the electrified distant between them, and her lips are dry against his, her body full of yearning. Bellamy kisses her back, and he loses the cloth to feel her skin under his fingers, how cold it is, how broken. He knows it’s not real, none of it, but he lets his mind be fooled by her, because he wants to. None of it it’s out of love, but out of need, on Clarke’s part. He goes with it, he shares the burden, holding up her crown so it doesn’t weight as much.

Clarke undresses him, too, slowly, and his body is burning against her frozen hands — suddenly there are too many buttons, too many zippers, too many layers. Their breathing patterns are similar now, sharp, jagged, and Bellamy moves carefully around Clarke, waiting patiently for the end of it all, for a breathy _No, I can’t do this_. It doesn’t come. She pulls him onto bed, their bodies clashing lightly, the fabric of her underwear prickling his skin. He kisses her neck, feeling her hands on his hair, it’s all blissful pain. They shift together, her body on top of his now, and he takes a moment to look at her. Clarke’s hair is falling all around her shoulders, and everything about her is beautiful and ilumminated and damaged. Her eyes are still dark, and Bellamy sees himself reflect on them. He forces himself into reality. Clarke isn’t thinking straight.

“Clarke, I—” he tries, brushing his fingers on her cheek. _I just want you to be okay_ , he wants to say, and he would if she had let him. Clarke kisses him again though, this time she feels lighter, and everything inside him flutters as he props himself up, holding onto her, her legs around his waist. They move slowly, so slowly he feels like pleading to her, _please, end it, please_. Bellamy shrugs his pain away to ease hers, willingly, waiting for her first moves, inhaling and exhaling in rhythm with the beating in her chest, in an even pace, steady, careful. He softly lifts her until he can lay her down, turning into ashes under her flickery fingertips. He kisses down her neck, to her chest, fingers tracing the fabric of her bra, to her stomach — “ _Bellamy_.” — her voice makes his whole body tremble, it comes out gruff and shaky and broken. Clarke’s the one pleading, and the thought itself is enough to get him off. She claws the flimsy bed sheets as Bellamy kisses her inner tighs, feeling the bones of her hips, savouring the sensation of her fingers tugging gently on his hair.

Bellamy had imagined situations like this on his mind before (in few, quiet occasions and maybe two more vivid dreams), and the sudden thought makes his cheeks flush uncomfortably. The blood stain on his chest drips all over, pouring hurt and shame all over Clarke’s bed. He feels dirty, and her soft touch makes everything worse. He sits up, breathing heavy, hating himself, hating Clarke, hating what it has become of them. He’s the one who says it, then. “I can’t do this, Clarke.” Bellamy doesn’t look at her, her whiteness, her hair, her darkness, her crown.

It takes Clarke a moment to respond. She does, eventually, sitting up, too, pulling covers around her body. “I know.”

 _It’s better to leave_ , he thinks, but Clarke won’t let him — she doesn’t ask, but her eyes are filled with specters and Bellamy can’t move. They did it together, taking lives to save their people, _together_ , his hand on hers, signing on Death’s deal, together, _together_. It was the right thing to do, and Bellamy feels like those words have been repeated too many times in his head already. _Together_. He wants Clarke to understand that, to let him carry the weight with her. Dante’s words dressed in Clarke’s voice haunts him even now, _I bear it so they don’t have to_. No, no, _no_. They bear it _together_.

“You’re not alone.”

Clarke offers him a smile. It resembles the smile she gave him several days before, by the fire, and his mind was a wreck because he was trying so hard to sort out the sharp tug inside his ribcage. Her smile is grateful, but platonic. Bellamy loves with his heart, Clarke loves with her head. His love is too heavy, hers, too paper thin. She might know, she might see it in the way he looks back at her face, the way his pupils dilate, scared that he’ll blink and she’ll be gone, trying to remember all of her details. She might have heard it between his lines, slipped _I love yous_ amidst angry words, rushed whispers, carefree quarrels. What a Shakespearean tragedy they are; the knight who has fallen in love with the princess, the princess who has fallen, too, but from grace, blood splattered all over her hands. Bellamy holds the back of her head to plant a kiss on her forehead, Clarke pulls him into a hug. It feels intimate and real, more real than the sex they almost had, than the shared, hungry kisses.

As if in a quiet agreement, Bellamy stays with her for the first hours of the night. Back into their clothes, into their protective armors, Bellamy sits on the ground, his back against her bed, and he holds her hand as Clarke sleeps, or tries so. He guards her nightmares, holding onto her when they seem to get harsher, listening to her silent weep. She wakes up from her slumber to let Bellamy into her bed again, and they lay down together, watching the dusk, feeling it weight down on them, unwieldy, choking. Too many ghosts hesitate in the shadows, watching them back. If Bellamy closes his eyes long enough, he’s able to see the children, Maya, her father, their faces, staring back at him with dead eyes — so he doesn’t.

“I don’t think I’ll be sleeping again,” he allows himself to say, but Bellamy’s careful to sound oddly light-hearted, careful not to sound too devastated, not to hurt her even further. Clarke doesn’t buy his acting, as she finds his hand under the sheets, holding it firmly.

“I’ll keep you company.”

Earth is never quiet, and Bellamy listens attentively to the nocture animals, the footsteps of guards on patrol, fire crackling in a nearby pit, people’s cries, painful moans coming all the way from the medical ward, and Clarke’s breathing. The after dark cacophony sooths him, reminds him that he’s alive and well and so are the people he cares about. Bellamy finds shelter in those thoughts, and in Clarke’s presence, her fingers around his own, and soon he feels himself drifting, body too tired to resist the urge to sleep. _To sleep, perchance to dream, to die, to sleep — for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come_. His dreams are obscure. They’re filled with war and darkness and fire, and when he wakes up, hours later, he’s sweating cold.

Clarke isn’t there anymore. He isn’t surprised. She left a note, and her handwritting is messy and stained, saying nothing and everything in between her blurred lines. _May we meet again_. His heart goes numb, her good-bye tastes sour on his tongue. Bellamy chokes on her words, wanting to run after her, to bring her back, to plead her to stay (with him, with them). He stops himself, and it hurts. Outside there’s daylight and his people, _their_ people. They need him. So Bellamy willingly takes her crown, the unwelcomed, burdensome, unfitting crown. It bleeds down on him like it’s made of thorns. He’ll wait for her, he’ll carry it for her, because that’s what he does.

“May we meet again, Clarke,” he says under his breath.

 _I bear it so you don’t have to_.


End file.
